Which clubs have bought the most, sold the most, loaned the most, released the most players?

By Tony Attwood

Very very little transfer action by the clubs that ended up in the top ten during the past couple of weeks. Top spenders are still Manchester City with £217m spent followed by Man U who have overtaken Chelsea into second position having spent £146m. Chelsea third with £126m.

Everton have now brought in 11 players. Manchester City are next with 6, Chelsea 5, and at the foot of the table Southampton stuck on 1 and Tottenham resolutely on zero.

But what is emerging – as I will try and show in this article – is several different methods of running a football club.

Arsenal, Manchester Utd and Liverpool have the traditional method of buying in modest numbers, and selling in modest numbers.

Chelsea and Manchester City are indulging in huge numbers of deals involving youngsters, as we’ll see in the second table and the thoughts below that.

Tottenham are sticking to their policy of buying no one, while Everton are buying everyone.

Here is the table of the top ten clubs from last season in terms of their player buying.

Club

Player

From

Date

Fee

Total £

Arsenal (2)

Alexandre Lacazett

Lyon

July

£46m

£46m

Sead Kolasinac

Schalke

June

End of contract

Chelsea (5)

Antonio Rüdiger

Roma

June

£29m

£126.7m

Ethan Ampadu

Exeter

July

Compensation

Willey Cabeleero

Free agent

July

£0

Tiémoué Bakayoko

Monaco

July

£39.7m

Álvaro Morata

Real Mad

July

£58m

Man City (6)

Benjamin Mendy

Monaco

July

£52m

£217m

Douglas Luiz

Vasco de Gama

July

£10m

Danilo

Real Mad

July

£26.5

Bernardo Silva

Monaco

July

£43.6

Kyle Walker

Tottenham

July

£50m

Ederson

Benfica

June

£34.9m

Man U (3)

Nemanja Matic

Chelsea

Aug

£40

£146m

Victor Lindelof

Benfica

June

£31m

Romelu Lukaku

Everton

July

£75m

Liverpool (3)

Andrew Robertson

Hull

July

£8m

£44.9

Mohamed Salah

Roma

June

£36.9m

Dominic Solanke

Chelsea

May

Released

Tottenham (0)

£0

Everton (11)

Lewis Gibson

Newcastle

Aug

Undisclosed

£58.7

Cuco Martina

Southampton

July

Released

Michael Keene

Burnley

July

£25m

Josh Bowler

QPR

July

Unknown

Sandro Ramírez

Malaga

July

£5.3m

Henry Onyekuru

Lupen

June

£7m*

Nathangelo Markelo

FC Volendam

June

Unknown

Davy Klaassen

Ajax

June

£23.7m

Jordan Pickford

Sunderland

June

£25m

Boris Mathis

Metz

July

Unknown

Wayne Rooney

Man U

July

Free?

Southampton (1)

Jan Bednarek

Lech Poznan

July

£5.7m

£5.7m

Bournemouth (4)

Asmir Begovic

Chelsea

May

£10m

£30m

Nathan Aké

Chelsea

June

£20m

Jermain Defoe

Sunderland

June

Free

Connor Mahoney

Blackburn

July

Released

West Brom (4)

Ahmed Hegazi

Al Ahly

July

Loan

£12m

Yuning Zhang

Vitesse Arnhem

July

Undisclosed

Ben Pierce

Free Agent

July

Free

Jay Rodriguez

Southampton

July

£12m

Now with a more restricted list of clubs (to make it all manageable) the list of loans out, the released players and the sold players. What really strikes me is that the clubs here are working on utterly different models. Chelsea have for example got rid of 32 players. Manchester City have disposed of 25 – and although as with Chelsea some of the loaned out players might come back, history suggests that is a very tiny number.

Arsenal on the other hand have moved nine players, Liverpool nine, Manchester United seven. The loans for Man City and Chelsea are just too numerous to mention. You can find all the details on the Guardian’s transfer site.

Club

Loan

Released

Sold

Arsenal

Asano

Willock

Hinds

Bola

O’Connor

Crowley

Martinez

Kamara

Szczesny

Chelsea

21 players

Solanke

Cuadrado

Terry

Atsu

Begovic

Kiwomya

Traoré

Aké

Ali

Chalobah

Matic

Liverpool

Chirivella

Manninger

Wisdom

Randall

Gomes

Leiva

Awoniyi

Stewart

George

Manchester City

11 players

Zabaleta

Mooy

Clichy

Sobrino

Navas

Ntcham

Caballero

Nolito

Sagna

Kolarov

Coveney

Horsfield

Zuculini

Iheanacho

Manchester United

Poole

Harrop

Rooney

Henderson

Januzaj

Johnstone

Redmond

Tottenham Hotspur

Ogilvie

Bentaleb

Glover

Walker

Walkes

Fazio

N’Jie

McGee

It is interesting that the two clubs with the massive churn rate are the two with owners who can afford anything. I think, it is more or less accurate to suggest here that these clubs are just trading in numbers to see if they happen to pick up any gems along the way.

Now of course I know the argument that says that this is a clever way of getting around FFP, but I’ve done the sums and I still don’t make them add up. Maybe that is just me, but the evidence still seems to me to suggest that there is precious little profit to be made from this loan trading that Manchester City and Chelsea are engaged in, and a whacking great loss where the salary of the player is not fully paid by the club taking the player on loan – which seems to be the case most of the time.

The problem is that when I try and get reliable figures for loan deals and resultant salaries, there simply are none. Obviously many of these matters are confidential between club and player but the rates suggested often just seem unbelievable to me in some cases, and there are just not figures in others, so I have given up on that project for the moment.

The alternative vision is that suggested above – trading just to see if any passing undiscovered genius is picked up. What will be interesting to see will be how many players there are who have had a year or two in the youth teams, who are playing in the opening game for the club. That is to say either players that have joined the club as children, or players like Bellerin or the Ox who have come from other clubs but then spent a year or more working their way up to the first team.

I suppose most footballers are certain that they are going to make it, that they will be the one in a million, and so going to Chelsea or Manchester City is still worthwhile for them. But the failure rate in terms of players who really make it looks to be astonishingly high.

16 comments to Which clubs have bought the most, sold the most, loaned the most, released the most players?

You fail to realise that City have a global network of football clubs. I really thought you would have made mention of that. Some of the buys for example Luiz go straight on loan there. In time I think a lot of clubs will copy this.

Also you have used Guardian data which is wrong. We all know Lukaku will cost £90m not £75m

You have asserted time after time that comments on here need to be backed up by way of facts but you continue to speculate as to the financial merits of loaning players and readily admit that the details of loans are rarely published.

Naz, the problem is when you say “we all know” what I want to know is “how”. That’s the nature of evidence. And yes I know about the network of clubs. Indeed I’ve been to the City group club in Australia, and predicted where the next one will be.

Mike T, then I have not made myself clear. I don’t think there is anything wrong with talking about issues where we are not fully au fait with the evidence simply because it is not available. So at that point we speculate, in the same way the physicists speculate about the singularity at the heart of a black hole. One takes such evidence as there is and works from there. What I object to is statements as we had today that “we all know that…” when in fact I don’t think we do, and even if we do, I’d like to know why. The details of loans are rarely published, but it is still possible to build models of how the transactions work including of course the fact that the clubs obey the law and that they are operating as independent footballing and business entities.

The irony for me is in one breath you are saying their is no or little information in the public domain which there isn’t yet in another you say you have done the sums. In reality you don’t have any numbers to even start to do the sums
Far from being fully au fait with the evidence in reality there is no evidence to draw the conclusion that you do in terms of the financial merit of any loan let alone the numbers that both Chelsea and indeed other clubs are dealing with.

Mike T -what is your problem? Tony clearly states that the numbers don’t add up. Why? Because he probably doesn’t have enough to make the calculation. At least he makes the point rather than nit pick without any purpose.

BFG – read & learn. There is enough on this blog covering SK & his money making TV crap. Incidentally it does not drag AFC into the muck – 2 distinct businesses. We are not part of Walmart either.

I agree that it’s very difficult to see how the loan system can be a money generating operation. Both Chavski and $iteh are known to get most of their younger players by paying big money for them, in either purchase price or salary, or both.
It’s extremely unlikely that any player that goes to lower league will warrant a loan fee of any note and the lower club is unlikely to be able to pay all of his salary, but the owner club needs to give the youngster playing time which they can’t give themselves.
Whereas for many of their fringe senior players they are already on a salary that loan clubs are rarely able to match, so the owner club has to ‘top-up’ the loan players salary even if they’re a lower PL club.
It appears to me that the only time this works positively is when a player has come through their youth set up and is clearly at a standard to play regular PL football but is on sensible wages because he’s been at the club some time. That can make the club very good money but it’s also very rare…
Talking about owning clubs overseas doesn’t change the fact that in other leagues (except possibly china) all players except the real stars are paid much less (in most it’s really much much less) than in the PL, so why would they pay over the odds for a loan player…

That Andy Mack & Menace (sic) have to come over as tough on here tells me all about Untold’s disturbing protectionist stance on anything which throws AFC in with the other clubs they despise. Menace- you are always angry. You really need to show more patience with us mere posters. Mack – you should know better.

BFG have you actually looked at the numerous previous pages which were talking about the Blood-sport TV issue?
So now your realise your comment was rubbish!
It’s easy to miss smaller subjects when they’re only a small part of previous articles but to miss that was really poor of you…

Mack you yourself are spending more time evading/talking around the sordid issue than getting to grips with it. Where is the Untold petition or is it only when it is a Citeh or Barca. We have a glass window/stones situ and it could get worse. If you consider Bloodsports as mere collateral and part of the sacrifice then make it clear.